A cable line that outgrew its parent brand.

Pig Hog is a cable brand of Ace Products Group, a musical-instrument accessories company in Petaluma, in Sonoma County, California. Pig Hog dates itself to 2011: “Since 2011, Pig Hog has been on a mission to make the toughest, most durable cables possible, at prices everyday musicians can actually afford,” its website says. No individual founder is named for the brand; it was created inside Ace. A news post on its own site says Pig Hog was “originally an offshoot of Strukture music accessories,” another Ace brand, until its range grew large enough to need its own website, pighogcables.com, which the Internet Archive first captured in April 2014.

Ace itself is older. Its website says it was founded in 1983; the NAMM Oral History programme, which interviewed its founder Alan Poster in July 2001, says he formed Ace Products in 1979 “to offer a wide range of gig bags and cases,” after years working with Jerry Hershman in retail, wholesale and manufacturing. We give both dates. An archived 2015 version of Ace’s about page quotes Poster — “We are the music accessories experts” — and names Dave Andrus as vice president and product designer. The same page set out the division of labour inside the group: Strukture and Kaces supplied “everyday selling ‘bread and butter’ products” such as gig bags, cases and stands, Reunion Blues the protective bags, and Pig Hog the cables with a flashier look.

Thick jackets, woven colours and pig puns.

Ace today calls itself “the leading global manufacturer of musical instrument accessories” and lists four brands: Pig Hog Cables, Reunion Blues, Kaces and Strukture. Over the years it has also handled the RocknRoller Multi-Cart and distributed Fender and, from 2015, Yamaha band and orchestra accessories. Pig Hog is its cable and connectivity line, and says it offers more than 300 cables, adapters and accessories.

The house construction is thick. Standard Pig Hog instrument cables use what the company calls an “extra-thick, yet supple 8mm jacket that resists kinking or tangling,” with “proprietary conductor technology,” and it says each cable “is hand tested before shipment.” The Vintage Series, which Ace’s 2015 about page described as “ultra-tough cables with a flashy look and a price tag that sells,” wraps a 20AWG oxygen-free copper conductor and a spiral shield with 90 per cent coverage in a 7mm woven jacket. Its colourways carry names such as Orange Crème, Tartan Plaid, Rasta Stripes and Seafoam Green; later series added Gold Ingot, Tarnished Silver and Burnished Copper metallics, Rainbow Sherbet, Cotton Candy and Graffiti prints, glow-in-the-dark cables in 2023 and the Hex Series “Silent” cables in Candy Apple Red, Daphne Blue and Seafoam Green.

Around the cables sit Pig Hog Solutions adapters and Y-cables, PigPower 9-volt supplies and daisy chains, Lil Pigs low-profile patch cables, Pig Patch synth cables, StageTrix pedalboard accessories, GigPig bags and Fat-Foam guitar stands. The puns are deliberate: the website’s title is “Fat Cable. Fat Sound,” and its about page signs off, “Don’t settle for those fat-free cables, plug in with Pig Hog!”

Design and documentation.

An instrument cable looks like the simplest thing on a stage, yet the brands that make them differ widely in age, ownership and in what they say about where their cables are made. Six of the seven in this guide are based in the United States and the seventh belongs to a North American group; they fall into three rough groups.

The catalogue suppliers are the largest. Hosa was founded in 1984 by Sho Sato, who had moved to the United States from Japan, and he has since handed it to his daughter, Mayumi Allison; it is based in Buena Park, California, the company says. Kirlin says Kirlin Industries was founded in 1997 and sells in 35 countries and regions from Ontario, California. Pig Hog, of Petaluma, California, dates itself to 2011 lists more than 300 cables, adapters and accessories, and appears among the brands of Ace Products Group, which also owns Reunion Blues.

The specialists sell on engineering. George L’s, the Madison, Tennessee, company of George L. Lewis, built its name on a solderless system: cut the low-capacitance cable and tighten on the plug, its website said in 2005. Evidence Audio was founded by Tony Farinella and says its cables are hand-built in the USA from American-made material. Lava Cable is now a brand of ACT Entertainment, whose other names include RapcoHorizon and ProCo, and which says Lava brings boutique materials to a wider audience.

The braided cable has its own claimant. Spectraflex says it has made its nylon-braided “Original Braided Cables” since 1988; its website gave an address in Clifton, New Jersey, in 1996.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Artists, warranties and an unstated origin.

Pig Hog markets through players. Its website lists a long roster of endorsing musicians, and in June 2026 it announced an Artist Series of signature cables designed with Coal Chamber’s bassist Nadja Peulen, the artist Chloe Trujillo and Wednesday 13, with part of the proceeds going to charities including Covenant House and MusiCares. Its Steve Vai page quotes Thomas Nordegg, credited as Vai’s guitar technician, praising a 20-foot Armor Clad cable as one that will “always fall STRAIGHT.” Most Pig Hog products carry a limited lifetime warranty against defects in manufacture, the company says.

Where the cables are made is not stated on the product pages we checked. Ace says its manufacturing “includes facilities across Asia, anchored by our 400,000 square meter factory in Vietnam,” which a 2018 Ace announcement placed near Ho Chi Minh City and described as expert in gig bags, foam cases, straps and stools; we give that as Ace’s claim and do not assume it covers Pig Hog cables.

The range keeps moving. Pig Hog’s own news pages record a Yacht Club cable series and an Orange Crème 2.0 cable in February 2020, a Hex Series XLR microphone cable promoted for “tangle free coiling” in June 2023, glow-in-the-dark instrument cables and three cable-organiser bags in August 2023, Pig Patch synth patch cables in February 2024, 30-foot half-coil instrument cables in March 2024 and magnetic cable loops in May 2024. Each launch is written in the same voice, with headlines such as “Pig Hog Fattens Up Vintage Cable Line,” which keeps a large and fairly technical catalogue feeling like one brand.

For a design guide, Pig Hog shows how a value brand can win attention through colour, texture and a running joke: woven jackets in candy and tartan patterns, product names built on pig puns, and a stance against “fat-free” cables. Compare its sister brand Reunion Blues and the Buena Park cable house Hosa. For this guide we use hog pink, orange crème and seafoam on barn black with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Pig Hog’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.